Key Strategies to Address Health Concerns
The far north Queensland of Australia is mainly inhabited Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population. This population has been suffering from various disadvantages in terms of education, housing, employment and mainly health services. Their health outcomes have always been quite poor with several occurrences of communicable diseases mainly the sexually transferred diseases (Fagan et al., 2015). Occurrences of STD is seen to be particularly high in the younger population of the Aboriginal community. A study has reported that two of the most common sexual transferred infections were chlamydia and gonorrhoea showing 8,339 and 2,739 per 100,000, compared with 869 and 44.1 per 100,000, respectively (Crooks, 2010). STI is involved in causing morbidity and leads to reproductive health outcomes that are negative like pelvic inflammatory disease, incidences of tubal infertility, congenital infection along with adverse pregnancy outcomes. The paper aims to discuss the building capacity towards Sexually Transmitted Infection Prevention in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across remote north Queensland. The paper illustrates the key strategies that can be employed in order to address the health concerns prevalent in the Aboriginal community. Additionally the paper discusses the approaches in order engage the community and ways to empower the community in building of capacity for prevention. The paper also suggests strategies in order to promote health models and the approaches employed to address the prevention of the sexually transmitted diseases.
One of the major strategies to address the health concern especially in terms of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) in the youth population of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is the implementation of the Youth Person Check strategy. The youth population of the aboriginal community is asked to participate in the programs who are further enquired through the use of questionnaires. Programs such as YPC are considered in such settings since the conditions here can be met (Fagan, Cannon & Crouch, 2013).
Another strategy implemented was the Well Person’s Health Check. This program was implemented which helped to identify the health problems having high prevalence in the population of the Aboriginals (Miller et al., 2002). This program was successful in developing an early detection that was sustainable in terms of strategy used for early detection especially for this particular region.
Finally another strategy can be implemented for identification of health issues especially at the practice level using the Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (BEACH)/Supplementary Analysis of Nominated Data (SAND) study (Nattabi et al., 2017). This study helps to examine the health issues impact on the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders through the use of certain questions which are related to their ethnicity. This way improvements can be obtained in the flow of information with respect to the sexually transmitted diseases and other communicable diseases.
Community Engagement
Community engagement is essential for building of capacity for the prevention of the Sexually transmitted diseases in the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders. Community engagement involves school-based programs which provides a holistic approach sexual health and substance use. The education programs developed for the young population of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander is required to respond to the social, cultural and environmental determinant in context to the area where they live. There is a need of access to the appropriate health care services, along with the community-based programs (Rusch et al., 2008). Peer education is also seen as an essential part. It is seen that rates of teenage pregnancy is high in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. This suggests that there is a need to develop programs of education promoting healthy living along with responsible parenthood in addition to avoidance of transmission of infections from the mother to the child. It also helps to build capacity to make healthy relationship choices.
Capacity building helps to strengthen the health services and along with building of community expertise in order to respond to health needs of the population. It also takes responsibility of the health outcomes. The idea of capacity building includes equipping the staff in an effective manner who possess appropriate cultural knowledge along with clinical expertise. It builds infrastructure of physical, human and intellectual nature that helps to foster leadership in addition to governance and management of finances (Trickett & Pequegnat, 2005).
Capability building in terms of prevention of sexually transmitted diseases consists of a two way action plan. The first action plan involves partnership and the second action plan involves prevention. With the help of effective partnership the health care services of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander can be improved. Partnerships can be formed in the national, state and territory levels through several agreements with the representative bodies of the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islander populations (Ward & Graham, 2011). Partnerships form the fundamental in the context of the efforts in order to improve sexual health of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations. Commitment should be present in the partnerships with in consultation and through joint decision make a response to HIV/AIDS, STIs and BBV. The partnerships must involve cooperation in activity at all levels. In this area the action might be influenced by the Framework Agreements and the Partnership Forums. These exist within jurisdictions and is involved in supporting the effort and in resourcing the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community (Trickett & Pequegnat, 2005).
Capacity Building
In terms of action area dealing with prevention, it highlights the need for focus on the strategies of prevention in order to target the STD infections. The approach included the broader aspects like disease screening; along with accession to the prevention tools and the hardware like NSP; strategies of diagnosis and early detection which uses client recall and systems of reminder; tracing of contact; and finally strategies of health promotion which enable the clients and providers with help to prevent the transmission of infection. Additionally there are use of education programs which are designed in order to raise awareness for the behaviour protection for disease prevention. This also involves barriers of structural and bureaucratic nature to the health care system.
Community empowerment can be achieved through the establishment of the various community-based organizations. Some of these organizations include the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO). This organisation is on of the peak organizations which is involved in the addressing the national Aboriginal health that in turn represents the ACCHSs (Bradshaw et al., 2005). It plays a key role in the strategy implementation in terms of addressing the sexually transmitted diseases and capacity building. This organization works in partnership with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health Framework Agreements and has a role in analysis and making plans at the jurisdiction level with the aim of improving the sexual health of the population of Aboriginals.
Another such organisation is the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services. This is a non-government organisation that plays a role in implementation of the strategies along with the NIASHS (Brown, 2016). Their role is central in terms of provision of health care delivery to the community. This care that is delivered by them helps to improve the sexual health of the Aboriginal people. They are also involved in the treatment and diagnosis of the STD and other such communicable diseases thus allowing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to adapt to their changing needs of the their community.
Other such community organizations include the AFAO, which is another such non-government organization that is involved representing the response of the Australians in terms of HIV or AIDS. The activities of the organization includes analysis of policies and certain formulations based on the HIV/AIDS issues along with promoting advocacy along with participation on the HIV advisory bodies/ other activities involve programs of education development (Crooks, 2010). It also promotes best practice in HIV prevention along with health promotion of HIV especially for the Aboriginal people.
Community Empowerment
The core domains of the capacity building includes the community engagement along with mobilization. Provision of community based access in a private manner to condoms to each community from one particular location is another domain. The next domain is the school based reproduction and the sexuality health education programs. There should comprise of curriculum that are appropriate to the age of the children, are led by teachers and the continuous in nature. Another domain is the major communications of the sexual health strategies (Fagan et al., 2015).
The sexual health promotion models or strategies that can be implemented in the communities of the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders includes the Youth and the relationship networks (YARN groups) (Laverack, 2007). These groups meet on a weekly basis in four different locations in order to issues agendas related to the issues of the youth of their community and to advice on the projects that could be developed. The next strategy involves the engagement of the major influential residents to the community based organizations. This includes the engagement of the officials of the local governments along with the media commentators in addition to the officials of the influential sporting clubs and the religious leaders. The next strategy is to develop condom infrastructure in locations which are participating. It might also include social marketing strategies for condoms like the local brands of condoms. For this lobbying is required from the local government and the healthcare service agencies serving in the participating locations (Nattabi et al., 2017). Strategies can also be developed for engaging the authorities of regional education along in order to provide a cross-sectorial study that is feasible in establishing in mechanism to achieve the aim in an acceptable manner. This might engage the communities of the individual schools in the issues of the sexual heath in a partnership with units of the regional indigenous school support. There should be provision for certain evidence based strategies as well which includes the events such as World AIDS Day and the activities on the International condom day. Certain arts based strategies can also be implemented like the Indigenous Hip Hop or the Radio drama like Kasa Por Yarn. Broadcasting of these education-based entertainments broadcasts across the region of the remote north Queensland might help (Miller et al., 2002).
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be concluded that in order to promote capacity building for prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infection in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across remote north Queensland, community engagement is mostly important. With the help of various strategies which helps to promote the building of capacity, the community can be empowered that will help to prevent the prevalence of STDs in the indigenous population. Additionally with the establishment of the community based organizations, the community can be empowered and more health care management strategies can be implemented with the aim of prevention of the disease in the community.
References
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Rusch, M. L., Shoveller, J. A., Burgess, S., Stancer, K., Patrick, D. M., & Tyndall, M. W. (2008). Demographics, sexual risk behaviours and uptake of screening for sexually transmitted infections among attendees of a weekly women-only community clinic program. Canadian Journal of Public Health/Revue Canadienne de Sante’e Publique, 257-261.
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